The Mindset Of High-Performing Leaders
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Patience is a virtue. Combined with self-discipline patience can be a very powerful tool which enables you to boost your performance tremendously.
Who consistently performs on a medium level is in the long term superior to those who sporadically work at the highest level.
This identifies the so-called high-performers.
They are motivated by their own personal ideals and they always strive for change.
In the following paragraphs I’m going to present you five essential characteristics of high-performing leaders that distinguish them from just mediocre managers.
1. The Self-Imposed Constraint
The strong willingness to achieve a successful change leads high-performers to a subordination to certain self-imposed constraints.
They do this consciously with the certainty and conviction that a policy of small steps has the potential to become a world policy in the long-term.
This takes time and requires a long-lasting self-motivation.
This motivation can initially be achieved by following personal role models and ideals.
But after a certain time, however, this energy is not enough any longer and something else must take its place: the self-imposed restraint.
In my opinion there’s no better way to provide consistent performance over a long period of time.
High-performers have a deep personal trust into their own consciously made decisions that serve as guardrails in times of demotivation and reluctance.
Since these decisions in a particular case, however, don’t feel very motivating, there’s no alternative to an unconditional submission to these decisions.
They may not be questioned or doubted in weak moments.
This is often to be exposed as a big fallacy in a following retrospect.
Real executives, like every other human being, sometimes suffer from moments of absolute frustration and demotivation.
Everybody knows these working days that feel like pure agony. And despite this difficult emotional state, they enforce themselves towards self-motivation which reveals their professional attitude.
They do not remain in their inefficient state of consciousness.
Effective performers make sober and conscious decisions with certain requirements that they impose to themselves just until the point they become habits.
This allows them to endure weak moments and to provide solid good performance.
2. Solid Performance Is Essential
Maximum performance sounds better you think?
Okay it does. But a constant good performance is more effective.
Have you ever been overtaken by another car driver on the highway while you and your wife were doing your sunday ride?
You surely know this amusing feeling when you meet this tailgater a few minutes later at the next traffic lights again, right?
Both of you have finally achieved exactly the same.
You have arrived at the same time at exactly the same place. I guess the tailgater has even arrived a little more stressed.
He also exposed himself to much bigger risks during the ride.
What if an animal would have jumped on the track? What if the tailgater had seen his predecessor slowing down too late?
You have certainly arrived calmer, more balanced and with lower risks at your destination.
Furthermore, you had the chance to think about this or that during your ride.
You probably get out of the car ready to solve the problem on the job for which you had no solution at all.
People who are constantly providing consistent good and solid performance are simply more effective.
And if you have a detailed look at the so-called maximum performance you will see that it can always be broken down into simple, clear and fairly banal single steps.
A correct decision in a very complex situation which is made without any analysis based upon your gut instinct may appear as an extraordinary performance at first.
A clear and exhaustive decision-making process would probably have leaded to the same decision. Okay, it would have taken more time.
But in 100 of such situations, I still suspect that the second way would finally have evoked a higher success rate.
This is no plea against the gut feeling. Gut feeling is a very important skill of effective leaders.
But this crucial skill should rather be applied in extreme situations. It should not dominate your daily business.
Even in sports you can find very complex movements of the athletes which appear in a multi-moment study e.g. as very trivial single steps.
The daily, constant practice makes them to habits which is the basic requirement for maximum performance.
3. The Professional Attitude
Generally high-performers have a positive and very constructive attitude.
It is founded in the ideals they seek to realize.
Despite this attitude, they are sober realists and therefore they are very careful with the application of the so-called “staff enthusiasm”.
They know about the simplicity and triviality of most operational tasks in organizations and they don’t try to fool their people.
I think it’s easy to understand that many employees can only spend limited enthusiasm for the daily billing or the administration of material numbers.
Effective leaders accomplish in motivating their staff by designing an optimal learning environment which includes providing their folks with challenging tasks.
This professional approach can be very inspiring and motivating.
Effective leaders don’t use these tools consciously or even in an eye-catching way as “motivation tools”.
They simply live these tools and motivate their folks by being present with their full attention and individual personality.
It’s not a role that they play, its pure authenticity.
They are able to find opportunities and challenges in each problem they’re confronted with.
In every troubled situation, they ask for their ability to act.
“What can I do concretely to get the best out of this situation?” is one of their central questions.
Their emotional competence and internal objective detachment to the daily problems characterize them as mature, professional leaders.
And problems dominate almost the entire working day of a leader.
As far as problems are the daily content of the leader job they must be considered by leaders in a professional way.
4. The Search For Inner Balance
Leaders who have to deal with problems the whole day long will have to analyze their own emotional life sooner or later.
They should do this to understand other people better because of a better self-awareness but also to gain an inner distance that preserves their own health.
When people identify themselves too much with the problem, which means they’re full of negative thoughts, they can not analyze or solve problems properly.
To analyze and to solve problems you always need an objective, calm mind.
Therefore you need inner balance. This balance will enable you, to deal with problems professionally and with a inner distance, regardless of any personal moods and feelings.
Since we’re all human beings, our ability to achieve this goal is surely limited. But high-performers always seek for the highest possible degree of objectivity and distance. This challenges them personally.
The personal interpretation of events takes up a central role in this endeavor.
“It’s not the things that worry us, but the opinions we have of these things” was already recognized by the philosopher Epictetus.
This finding is of central importance for the emotional and mental life of all human beings.
Problems themselves are neither bad nor good, even if the word itself is repeatedly used in a negative context.
The personal interpretation makes an event to a disaster, a challenge to grow personally, an unique opportunity or an interesting research topic.
It is up to you how you’re heading towards a problem.
You have the choice of interpretation. Nobody dictates that to you.
But high-performers always choose the most effective one.
What do you think which one could that be? 
Furthermore, it is difficult to give any tips for a better internal balance.
It behaves very similar to the learning of riding a bicycle: Someone can help you on the bike or to identify a good route with you, or to assess the best possible weather and then to push you vigorously.
But only you yourself can find the balance, no one can really help you with this. The only way is practice, practice, practice ….
5. The Question Of Guilt
Finally, I would like to write a few sentences concerning the question of guilt.
High-performers always feel completely responsible for their entire lives and all their actions.
You know that the assignment of guilt to others simultaneously means that you’re not able to take the responsibility for your own life.
If someone else can be blamed for your situation then you have no responsibility for your own life any longer.
People, who feel like victims all the time have already lost the responsibility for their own lives.
This is not just ineffective, it even makes you sick.
The idea of being at the mercy of other people drives effective leaders literally mad.
So they’re continuously working on actions to create circumstances that make them more independent of external factors.
Probably every human being feels like a victim from time to time.
The intensity of the efforts to separate oneself from this role and to escape from it is a great measurement for the maturity of an effective leader.
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